And, since we're on the subject of cards - do you play tarot much, Herr Zwakh?"
"Tarot? Of course. Ever since I was a boy."
"Oh, then I'm surprised to hear anyone asking for a book about the whole Kabbala who's had it in his hands at least a thousand times."
"I? Had it in my hands? I?' Zwakh beat his brow.
"Yes, you. Has it never occurred to you that the game of tarot contains two and twenty trumps-precisely the same number as the letters of the Hebrew alphabet? Don't our decks have card after card of which the painted pictures are obviously symbols - the fool, death and the Devil, the last judgment? My good friend, how loud do you want life to shout her answers in your ears? There is no need for you to know, of course, that the word 'tarot,' bears the same significance as the Jewish 'Tora,' that is to say, 'The Law,' or the old Egyptian 'Tarut,' 'Questions asked, ' and the old Zend word 'Tarisk,' meaning, 'I require an answer. ' But learned men ought to ascertain these little facts before they give out with such certitude that tarot dates from the period of Charles the Sixth. And, just as the Pagad comes first in the game of cards, so is a man the first figure of all in his own picture book - his own doppelgänger, so to say. The Hebrew letter Aleph is shaped like a man, with one hand pointing to heaven, and the other downwards, meaning: 'As it is above, so it is below; as it is below, so it is above.’”